The Consequences Of Obama’s Weakness

It has now been just over one year since President Barack Obama delivered a confident White House address explaining how the United States and its partners would be able to counter the Islamic State—which, in 2014, he claimed was neither Islamic nor a state. A year later, as we mark the fourteenth anniversary of September 11, ISIS is still very much Islamic and ever more entrenched as a rogue state. Obama’s 2014 speech about ISIS paved the way for the political and humanitarian crisis that we are now facing one year later. There are no surprises here: Bad consequences follow when a United States President thinks that he can counter forces of terrorism and world disorder on the cheap without the use or threat of ground forces.